The "Inertia" nutcracker shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,524,486 and produced and sold by the Charter Company of Raleigh, N.C., has over the past years been one of the most, if not the most, successful nutcrackers marketed in the United States. Its success can be attributed to a number of factors, one of which is its ability to crack the shell of the nut without breaking the inner kernel.
The "Inertia" nutcracker referred to above has in the past been of a manual design and as such has included a striker that in operation is manually cocked. To cock the "Inertia" nutcracker requires that the striker be pulled against the tension of one or more of rubber bands to a cocked position, after which the striker is released such that it may impact against an impact nutcracking assembly that holds the nut to be cracked. While this design, as pointed out above, has met with great success, it is known that there is a desire by certain customers for a fully automatic nutcracker.
There have been attempts in the past to provide automatic or powered nutcrackers. For example, note the electric nutcracker shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,841,212. This nutcracker is powered by an electrically operated solenoid. With such automatic nutcrackers, it has been found that they are generally expensive, complicated, and sometimes unreliable. Equally as important, is the fact that most powered or automatic nutcrackers have been of a design that do not produce a whole inner kernel. It is believed that it is very important in any nutcracker that the same produce a whole inner kernel.
Therefore, there is a need for a powered or automatic nutcracker that will produce whole kernel nuts and which is simple, relatively inexpensive, and reliable.